Prunes & Prejudice
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Roger(the gentleman sleuth, Roger Sheringham) sat through the first part of lunch. It was not until the necessity for consuming a large plateful of prunes and tapioca pudding, the two things besides Jews that he detested most in the world, began to impress itself upon his consciousness, ...
This out-of-nowhere, gratuitous display of prejudice, comes from The Layton Court Mystery (1925) written by Anthony Berkeley.
In my reading of early English detective fiction and other literature (1890s to the 1930s) I often come across racial slurs and other slings and arrows against groups of people.
Our contemporary culture no longer tolerates - rightly so - such insults. I like to think my generation has improved in respecting others. We may think nasty thoughts but most of us are
ashamed to express or act upon them.
I am not a fan of Berkeley's fictional detective, the prissy Mr. Sheringham, but I believe there is value in seeing what previous societies permitted.
Censoring that book would be wrong. However outrageous, that was part of the culture at that time. We need to see it and learn from it.
The second point is that there is value in confronting these cliched aspersions and understanding how they affect each of us. Do we empathize? Do we laugh? Do we cringe?
What was the author, Anthony Berkely, thinking? Was this an attempted witticism?
For whom?
Regardless, the editor, the publisher and the contemporary reader had no objections, as far as we know.
Consider the book's date, 1925.
What was happening in Europe? According to sources, in the nine years between 1924 and 1933 the Nazi Party developed and became ascendant in Germany. Hitler came to power in 1933.
Germany hosted the Olympics in 1936 and much of the blatant persecution of Jews was kept hidden from visitors.
Shortly after the Olympics, the killing began but the world largely turned a blind eye.
Some of that intentional blindness was due to ugly stereotypes popularized in popular literature.
Russia's brutality toward Ukraine is similar; it seeks to eradicate a sovereign nation by using mass murder as a means to that end.
Speaking of the Olympics, should Russia be allowed to send its athletes to Paris? Of course not.
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STEAL THIS BOOK, if you can: As Andrew Lang has it
And in the lion or the frog---
In all the life of moor and fen,
In ass and peacock, stork and log,
(Aesop) read similitudes of men.?
:
And, for examples of effective workplace collaboration:
Leading from the Middle, is available at Amazon.
Copyright all text John Lubans 2024
This out-of-nowhere, gratuitous display of prejudice, comes from The Layton Court Mystery (1925) written by Anthony Berkeley.
In my reading of early English detective fiction and other literature (1890s to the 1930s) I often come across racial slurs and other slings and arrows against groups of people.
Our contemporary culture no longer tolerates - rightly so - such insults. I like to think my generation has improved in respecting others. We may think nasty thoughts but most of us are
ashamed to express or act upon them.
I am not a fan of Berkeley's fictional detective, the prissy Mr. Sheringham, but I believe there is value in seeing what previous societies permitted.
Censoring that book would be wrong. However outrageous, that was part of the culture at that time. We need to see it and learn from it.
The second point is that there is value in confronting these cliched aspersions and understanding how they affect each of us. Do we empathize? Do we laugh? Do we cringe?
What was the author, Anthony Berkely, thinking? Was this an attempted witticism?
For whom?
Regardless, the editor, the publisher and the contemporary reader had no objections, as far as we know.
Consider the book's date, 1925.
What was happening in Europe? According to sources, in the nine years between 1924 and 1933 the Nazi Party developed and became ascendant in Germany. Hitler came to power in 1933.
Germany hosted the Olympics in 1936 and much of the blatant persecution of Jews was kept hidden from visitors.
Shortly after the Olympics, the killing began but the world largely turned a blind eye.
Some of that intentional blindness was due to ugly stereotypes popularized in popular literature.
Russia's brutality toward Ukraine is similar; it seeks to eradicate a sovereign nation by using mass murder as a means to that end.
Speaking of the Olympics, should Russia be allowed to send its athletes to Paris? Of course not.
***********
STEAL THIS BOOK, if you can: As Andrew Lang has it
And in the lion or the frog---
In all the life of moor and fen,
In ass and peacock, stork and log,
(Aesop) read similitudes of men.?
:
And, for examples of effective workplace collaboration:
Leading from the Middle, is available at Amazon.
Copyright all text John Lubans 2024
John Lubans - portrait by WSJ